Relative faith
by Inkfire
Summary: Clara Oswald wanders, from one story to the next—sometimes dreaming, sometimes dying. There is a pattern; there are silly impressions, a chill down her spine. She still carries on. A one-shot for the "Horror stories" prompt on the LiveJournal who-contest community.


**This piece was written for the prompt "Horror stories" on the LiveJournal community who-contest. Ummm… enjoy! :)**

* * *

_Her mother is there, silhouette seen in a flash, and then she disappears._

_Clara reaches out a hand, yet her arm is too short; she shouts a name, but her voice is too small—it breaks into tiny echoes that only reverberate through her skull, sucked into the nothingness of space. When she runs, she runs through a thick, colourful crowd that pushes and pulls her from all sides, words barked in foreign tongues all around her, hostile. She struggles and screams, but they have her regardless and whirl her towards unknown directions, a nameless living mass, huge and fierce and uncaring—_

_Her hands are cold. Her fingers are bare, trembling. Her hair whips against her face. _

_She is lost, leaf in the wind. Helpless._

_She is to be the offering. The songs she hears from afar are twisted and wrong, fragmented screeches more than the sound of harmony. She is pushed to her knees, and when the life is sucked from her, it flows golden and she thinks she didn't know she held such beauty within herself. _

_Then she jolts awake._

* * *

She is not happy.

The house is gloomy, all tall ceilings and half lights, a muted world where every sound somehow seems muffled and laced with long echoes. It is all very atmospheric, she tells herself, playing the part of the strong and the dismissive, the bright little thing, unimpressed. It is like in Victorian books, and no wonder; they bounced into a past reality, one she can touch and taste so acutely, strutting around like it's their playground. This particular part of the universe is vast and drafty and feels somewhat like an open door, a window to the unreal, the beyond. Silly impressions.

How very silly.

She feels, a bit, like those girls in the horror stories, complete with candlelight and a hammering heart. With each step, something cool is slipping down her spine; ghosts dance in the small crease at the back of her neck, with whispered breaths in the shell of her ear, that say nothing. _Run_, maybe; but no, they don't walk away.

She is not a child, not a child, she is strong…

She comes when he beckons, albeit reluctantly. She stays with him, and he stands by her; he brought her here, grabbed her hand to take that jump, whisks her away once a week. This is their Wednesday madness, she reminds herself as they walk the corridors and something touches her palm. Nothing more, nothing less. The fingers feel a little unsubstantial and it would not do to clutch them too tightly.

She is like the girls in the horror stories, yes: playing with things way beyond her, squinting for human laws into the deeply unknown, probing. Those girls who tiptoe in the half-dark, too close to the edge, yet all edges are blurred and they should know better; she used to snort at them. _Sorry dear, I'm afraid you won't be coming back_.

The cold distance of the spectator with popcorn and remote control in her hands, flippant. She did not know the call, that tugging, luring whisper—

_Find me. See me._

Lonely thing, a ghost must be, cold like that. It had never occurred to her in the stories.

* * *

She is lost.

At times she is running. Others, she's crawling, skittering, impelled by wordless urgency. The pain is what drives her.

When he faces her, his face contorts in disgust and fear. He never used to look at her that way; she could scream, but can't, for if she begins she may never, ever stop. Her skin burns. Her whole being feels feeble, ready to scatter into ashes.

He hates her very existence. He hates her to _protect _her. His pretty, silly face, all drawn in the crude burning light, is taut and foreign, awful and laughable. He will not ease the pain; he will not give her one word. Defeat glints in his pupils as he faces her, briefly, before he runs after _herself—_

Maybe he thinks he's still looking after her somehow. Maybe he thinks he's doing her a mercy. Only the pretty and unhurt version may live, yet in his hearts of hearts, he might _understand _her better, burning—dry and aching and desperate and reeling… There are ashes in his eyes, she knows now, and they will not moisten for her, but they feel kinship to her suffering.

Maybe it does still matter to him. Maybe the guilt will eat him up and roast him dry.

For all she cares…

It feels like war drumming against her bones, the whole structure of her being left hollow and feeble, yet somehow still standing. The call roars inside of her, the call to hurt that isn't a lust. If she ends up tearing something apart, she does not hope to feast on the life within.

She didn't know why she was running, before. She has read it on his face. He will destroy her.

She hates him. She hates the rage and the helplessness in his gaze and she hates him more yet when he turns away. She hates her own lovely face. She hates that a version of herself can still hold his hand without fearing to have a finger crumble away, or to sear his skin.

Fire hates easy. Only kindling is required and she stands there offered.

In one second she unhappens, and does not wake up to speak and walk around and wash her hair like before. She just is, then is no more. The flicker fades, the pain eases, and nobody's left back to feel gratefulness or loathing.

* * *

_Don't die_, he tells her as he leaves, like she can help that.

Should help that, even… that is her responsibility, she supposes as she glances at her charges. Not dying. Right. She can do that.

The Cybermen are intent on her dying though—or else it is that conversion thing? He hasn't said, never clearly, just in passing and well, she reckons the information is not so relevant as both options are best to be avoided. _Still_. He doesn't say, he ducks and smiles and waves a dismissive hand and she feels quiet annoyance building, until one day she'll just _snap _at him.

Unless she can help _that_…

Unless she dies before she has a chance to ask. The way he shouted it over his shoulder, the words slipping easy and urgent from his tongue… Death feels much closer a concept when he is the one tossing the idea at her like that; it hits straight at the gut, bounces off her bones, leaving echoes.

No. Idiotic, paranoid impressions, she is no child. She is a grown-up and can look after herself.

Mr. Clever tells her she'll be dying, too, but it is not the same; it is merely to scare her witless and she is not a child, not a toy, she is not impressed and she will not bulge. Mr. Clever goes up close and personal, obvious play on her feelings and she pretends it does nothing to her. Manipulation, cheap moves at that; not the likes of the Doctor. The Doctor watched the dust of civilizations settling or drifting through the air and he would not wax lyrical about her pretty face. The Doctor doesn't say, keep things veiled and hidden… that's the thing. He pushes and pulls her around, all dazzling smiles and silliness. He flails and gushes, but doesn't talk that much.

And he puts her life on the line, and orders her not to die. Fair enough.

The choice is hers, she decides. She chooses to obey.

Best she can…

* * *

_It begins in dreams. _

_There are the silly, innocent ones like missing the bus or losing her socks. Dreams don't usually make much sense, Clara knows that. They are a tangle of the mind working out its knots, a blend of the living and the dead, anxiety and catharsis. Dizzying, always, as one can expect._

_In dreams, she's never been sure where she was._

Those _dreams are not any different—have no reason to be. Not deep down. They are wild fantasies, a way to express the excitement and terror that are naturally always pumping through her veins these days. Fear, both tangible and unspoken, given face and Clara crumples under radiations or energy beyond anything her body could bear__—__crashes, withers, a thousand times over. Over and over and _over_ and she feels the emptiness in her bones, sitting at the core, so wide and aching she could start screaming and never stop again. How could she ever not have been aware? How could she think she was matter and a sassy mouth and the boss? She is nothing, a flicker in the wind._

_Dwindling, twirling, fading…_

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a girl who fell from a staircase in the clouds, and the tears cried for her drenched London in salt, a good fairy's blessing.

Once upon a time, there was a greedy old god and a girl with a leaf. There was a daughterless warrior and a girl with a song. At other times, there are big, friendly buttons.

There is a man who knows all of those times and strides from one to the other like they are adventures; the scones to his five o'clock tea, the spice sprinkled over a long existence, the natural course of one more day. He saves lives, and watches some lost. He keeps it all in his hearts, to lie dormant there probably—she isn't sure.

There is a man, and he burns like fire.

(She cannot wait for next Wednesday.)


End file.
